Speaking to a handful of reporters in his Washington office, Chaffetz said that he supported the bill out of concern that online gambling companies are targeting children. He is considering calling a hearing on the matter in the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, which he now chairs.

“That is so offensive and wrong,” he said. “When you’re a seven year-old kid and there is no physical barrier, and all you need to do is get your iPhone, that becomes a whole new world.”

“This is the Wild Wild West,” he added. “There are no rules, no prohibitions, no structure, no oversight, nothing.”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose spokesman says he will introduce the same bill in his chamber, believes that Internet gambling is a “nefarious activity” and should be banned. “I think people in the criminal world and terrorist world could get a benefit from it,” he said.

If passed, the bill would overturn a 2011 Department of Justice ruling on the Interstate Wire Act that effectively allowed the states to decide on whether or not to legalize online gambling. With still-unrealized dreams of tax revenues, Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey became the first to do so in 2013.

The issue doesn’t break along the usual partisan divide. There are six co-sponsors on the House bill, ranging from conservative Reps. Steve King and Trent Franks to moderate Republican Charlie Dent. Other Republicans believe that it is a states’ rights issue and are more or less happy with the DOJ ruling.

Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, argued that Congress should reject the bill and leave the issue to the states.

“You don’t want the federal government coming in and evening things up: ‘Oh, it’s not fair if Delaware has gaming and Pennsylvania doesn’t,’” he said. “Let them decide. It’s not your job. You don’t live there. And if it’s a dumb idea, then after a while Delaware will be ‘Hey that’s a dumb idea’ and change the law.”

The debate has attracted high-profile lobbyists like former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who works for Caesars. Chaffetz said he met with Adelson in January and told him about his intentions to introduce the bill.

“Is there big money involved in gaming,” Chaffetz asked. “You bet there is. There’s a lot of money out there. They’re banking on converting millions of people to generate billions of dollars in revenue that they haven’t been able to do before. And that means by getting it to markets like Utah and all nooks and crannies of the country.”

“It is not just about any one person,” he added.

But Adelson is indeed an “active player,” as Chaffetz put it. He met with House Speaker John Boehner and House Judiciary Committee members in January, according to the industry publication GamblingCompliance, and Andy Abboud, Adelson’s chief lobbyist, has vowed a “full-court press.”

Adelson’s moves follow a 2014 election cycle in which he gave $13.2 million—more than any other GOP-aligned donor according toPolitico—to help the Republicans take the Senate majority. He also gave the yearly maximum individual donations of $32,400 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee, and $2,600 to several Republican Senate candidates, including Graham and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to the Center for Responsive Politics and CQ Moneyline. His political action committee run by Abboud spentnearly $60,000 last cycle. He did not give money directly to Chaffetz, who won in a landslide last year.

But Chaffetz can claim other allegiances with the GOP’s top moneyman. Chaffetz is going to Las Vegas this weekend and said he wanted to see Adelson, but he’s out of town. When a reporter asked where he’s staying, Chaffetz replied with a smile, “The Palazzo,” a Las Vegas Sands property.

U.S. Treasury warns casinos on illegal sports betting

(Reuters) – U.S. casinos must take steps to combat illegal sports gambling, the Treasury Department has told an industry group in a letter that came just weeks before the Super Bowl, one of the biggest betting events of the year.

“Increases in sports betting conducted on behalf of third parties are facilitating criminal activity and posing a money laundering risk to the U.S financial system,” the Treasury said in a letter made public on Friday. The letter was dated Dec. 24.

The global International Center for Sport Security reported last year that 80 percent of global sport betting is illegally transacted, and therefore invisible to authorities. It said $140 billion is laundered annually through sport betting. The report urged governments to correct what it called a vulnerability of sport betting to organized crime.

The letter with guidance for casinos from Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) came in response to a Dec. 22 Thomson Reuters article, which said the department was likely to press casinos to take a greater role in fighting illegal sport book activity.

The U.S. National Football League’s Super Bowl on Feb. 1 yields one of the busiest sports book weekends of the year.

The FinCEN letter was addressed to the president of the American Gaming Association (AGA), the trade group for the U.S. casino industry. The AGA, citing the Thomson Reuters article, had asked FinCEN about its plans to issue guidance.

FinCEN noted that prior to the news of its planned guidance, it had been “planning on communicating to the casino industry directly with respect to a particular concern in this regard.”

Regulators and law enforcement authorities are concerned by intelligence suggesting that criminals are making bets with legal sports book operations, using intermediaries, or “runners,” to place bets, the Treasury bureau said.

“In these cases, the intermediaries rarely voluntarily disclose to the casino that a transaction is being conducted on behalf of a third party, thereby disguising the third party’s role in the transaction and obscuring the source of funds used to place the bet. This poses distinct money laundering risks for casinos,” FinCEN said in the letter.

Sports gambling is legal in only four U.S. states including Nevada, home of Las Vegas. However, illegal sports betting operations around the world, including online outfits, sometimes offset bets they receive by placing casino wagers, law enforcement sources told Thomson Reuters.

Runners have been known to loiter at casinos, keeping numerous mobile phones and tablets near them to receive orders from illegal gambling rings.

The letter reminds casinos that the Bank Secrecy Act requires them to ask gamblers whether their bets are for themselves, and to report any wagers for third parties as suspicious activity. The letter also reminds casinos that they must take a risk-based approach to compliance, focusing on gaming that presents the greatest money laundering threat.

In a statement responding to FinCEN’s letter on Friday, AGA President and Chief Executive Officer Geoff Freemansaid the group “welcomes continued guidance from FinCEN.” He added that “members are committed to robust anti-money laundering measures” and that they “invest significant resources to tailor risk-based compliance programs for every corner of the casino, including sports books.”

Freeman said the risk of money laundering “is far greater in the vast, unregulated, illegal sports betting market than in the highly regulated, legal gaming industry.

“While casinos routinely look for suspicious bets at sports books and have worked with law enforcement to identify illegal activity, in some cases leading to criminal convictions, no such oversight exists for the illegal sports betting market,” he said

Las Vegas: City of gambling, tech conferences, and water crises

Techies from all over the world crowded Las Vegas this week for an annual gadget lovefest, the Consumer Electronics Show. But the region’s real engineering feat took place last month about 25 miles outside of town.

In early December, about 300 feet below the surface of Lake Mead, engineers drilled upward to complete the last major step in the construction of an enormous, three-mile tunnel. The tunnel now reaches the lake, which is the source of 90% of Las Vegas’ water. Once it’s operational and a new pumping station is complete, the pipeline will be able to draw from the lake even if water levels fall below the existing intake pipes (it’s getting close), keeping the faucets running in the drought-plagued region even after current ducts are left sucking air.

The tunnel has been under construction for seven years and is budgeted at $817 million. Still, the project addresses the symptoms but not the cause of the region’s water scarcity problem. Solving it will take greater innovation, and sacrifice—but not in the ways you might imagine.

At first glance, CES, with its 160,000 people descending on this fountain-filled desert city, is a case study in wastefulness. Approaching Sin City from the East, you fly over a relentlessly dry and beige terrain, with vast stretches of sand leading to similarly barren mountain ranges, and then suddenly you spot high-rise hotels, pools, and green boulevards that cater to the gambling crowd and conference set.

But Vegas’s tourism industry is remarkably water-efficient. That grass by the sidewalk on the strip? It’s fake. The hotel’s shower systems? Indoor plumbing in Vegas is almost 100% recycled. The dancing Bellagio fountain? It uses 40 acre-feet of water annually, enough for about six acres of alfalfa, and it uses groundwater from a well owned by the hotel.

The bulk of Colorado River water is used by farms in states like California and Arizona, which provide crucial jobs and food to much of the U.S., but also use 80% of the water. Other significant consumers are air conditioning units and residential lawns. Once that water is sunk into the dry desert ground, it doesn’t come back.

For years, water supply and real estate development have been awkward bedfellows. The region has overtaxed its reserves amid the rapid growth in residential and commercial building projects. The latest example: Elon Musk’s Gigafactory. Nevada recently dedicated $1.4 billion in incentives to the project, which will supply lithium-ion batteries, mostly for Tesla’s electric vehicles. It will use as much as 815 million gallons of water per year (from north of Lake Mead), according to some reports, twice as much water as the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip.

In bringing the factory to the state, “Water was a pretty significant part of the conversation,” Steve Hill, director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The factory will likely be supplied with its own water rights along with recycled water from the area, but it depends on a fragile system that requires vigilance in the short term and innovation in the long term. You can have the best tech in the world, but if you don’t also have the resources to power it—you’ll get about as far as the 3D TV.

Your blackjack dealer is more of a sign of the future than CES

There’s something awkward about the Consumer Electronics Show. After a happy weekend of clubbing, swilling airplane lounge-priced cocktails, and wearing leopard print, come Monday the average Vegas tourist witnessed a deluge of men and women (mostly men) wearing business casual slacks descend on the city.

All of a sudden, the capital of the service economy, chock full of eerily friendly waitstaff, was awash in engineers. But as futuristic as CES may be (we can only hope the terrible and beautiful spider dress doesn’t ever materialize), it’s the booze-fueled and hotel-driven industries that are ascendant, not the hordes of iPhone case manufacturers that fill the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Thanks to ever-increasing automation and efficient manufacturing, jobs involved in the production of goods—like, say, TVs (even 4k TVs)—have barely budged in the U.S. since the 1940s. Employment in the service industry, on the other hand, soared to more than 120,000 last year. The number of jobs in hospitality surpassed those in manufacturing during the recession, and the gap has only widened since then.

In Nevada, a quarter of all jobs are in food and hospitality. Even Zappos, the region’s tech-driven harbinger of downtown real estate development, thinks of itself as “a customer service company that just happens to sell shoes.”

Sure, service isn’t the only industry in Nevada. But casinos are the state’s largest industry, accounting for a huge chunk of its GDP, and they will remain on top for the foreseeable future. If you want a glimpse of the jobs of the future, look no further than the many people who work on the Las Vegas strip full time, not just during this one week in January. It’s probably a safer bet than spider dresses.

What do consumers want? Better batteries, not wearables

You wouldn’t guess it wandering the endless displays of gadgets here at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, but the top tech need on the mind of most Americans isn’t sharper televisions, smarter watches, virtual reality glasses or connected refrigerators.

It’s better batteries.

Watch more about better batteries from Fortune’s video team:

That’s the conclusion of a new Fortune-SurveyMonkey study, released today in Las Vegas during the annual show.

When asked “what new or improved smartphone feature are you most excited about,” “improved battery life” was the leading answer by a long shot – 33% . Faster processors came in second, with 16% of respondents.

Meanwhile, amidst a flurry of fitness bands and smart watches, only 12% said they were “extremely likely” or “very likely” to buy such a wearable device in 2015, while 74% said they were “not so likely” or “not at all likely.” And only 2% said they were extremely or very likely to buy Internet-connected glasses, such as Google Glass, in 2015, while 92% said they were “not so likely” or “not at all likely.”

Some 75% of respondents said they hadn’t even heard of 4K Television – another hot item at CES this year.

The survey also showed a yawning gap between generations on technology use. For instance, 40% of those 60 and older said they were extremely or very concerned about the potential privacy risk posed by consumer use of drones. But only 23% of 18-29 year olds expressed the same concerns.

The survey of 1,000+ adults was conducted Dec. 30 to Jan. 2, using SurveyMonkey Audience, a proprietary online panel. Respondents for this survey were selected to mirror the age and sex proportions of adults according to the U.S. Census.

Shiny new gadgets, smart homes and beyond: A CES 2015 preview

This post is in partnership with Entrepreneur. The article below was originally published at Entrepreneur.com.

By Jason Fell, Entrepreneur

For technology enthusiasts, Las Vegas is about to get even more wild and crazy. Next week kicks off CES 2015, otherwise known as the Consumer Electronics Show. Yes, that show. It’s like the mega convention for all things technology.

This year’s iteration is being held in Sin City January 6 to 9. The 2015 CES will feature more than 3,500 exhibitors and is expected to attract more than 160,000 industry professionals from all walks of tech.

Beyond faster computers, bigger TVs and the flashiest new smartphones, you’re probably wondering, “What can I expect from CES this year?” Fortunately, we have some answers.

While digital gadgets like cameras, TVs and digital phones are great, this year we’ll also see more of a “digitization of our physical space,” says Shawn DuBravac, chief economist and senior director of research for Consumer Electronics Association. Translation: The Internet of Things is changing everything.

“We’re looking at the commercialization and viability of technological innovation,” DuBravac explains. “Instead of ‘Is it possible?’ we’re wondering, ‘Is it meaningful?’ We need real use-case scenarios coming out of the technologies we’ve been talking about.”

One area that’s sure to see some action in this regard is the smart home. We got a taste of smart-home technology at last year’s CES and it looks like 2015 will have even more. New this year is something called the Smart Home Marketplace, a 25,000 square-foot exhibitor area dedicated to smart home tech. Think stuff like customized security monitoring and home automation — and beyond. Major exhibitors will include companies like ADT, Bosch Honeywell, Lowe’s and Logitech.

“We’ll see real use-case scenarios coming out of the technologies we’ve been talking about,” DuBravac says.

Oh, and that buzzing overhead? Yep, it’s a drone. We’ve seen drones before, of course, but drones are starting to get more serious attention from consumers. This year’s event will feature the Unmanned Systems Marketplace, with 6,500 square feet of exhibit space specifically for companies and their drones. Expect the latest unmanned aerial vehicles from companies like Pelican Products, iRobot and Squadrone.

CES also has love for tech entrepreneurs (and we can’t blame them). The Eureka Park Tech Zone — the area that showcases startup companies — is expected to grow by about 50 percent over last year, with 300 startups on hand exhibiting their wares.

“No longer can tech exist in isolation. You have to think about how the product you’re bringing to market will be used in conjunction with other digitally enabled products and services,” DuBravac says. “Every individual thing is one part of a larger collection.”

For hungry, passionate entrepreneurs, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Let’s be serious, though: All of this only scratches the surface of what will be happening at CES 2015. I’ll be at the show all week reporting on the ground. Want to know what shiny new smartwatch debuted? How about 3-D printers? Fitness tech? Stay tuned to Entrepeneur.com for news and more.

New York gambles on full-size casinos

This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com.

By Elizabeth Barber, TIME

A state board has recommended the approval of three full-size, Las Vegas–style casinos in New York State.

The three gaming complexes are slated for Schenectady (near the state capital, Albany), Tyre (near the Finger Lakes) and Sullivan County Catskills (north of New York City), the New York Times reports. They will be the first of their kind in the state.

The recommendations cap a competitive campaign by 16 casino developers for the right to set up shop in New York State, many of them hoping to tap New York City for customers.

Yet the board in the end rejected all six proposals for casinos immediately kitty-corner to the Big Apple, favoring instead developers with plans to give northward communities, still mourning the loss of a teeming manufacturing sector, a heady injection of jobs and cash.

Critics of New York State’s effort to expand gambling have doubted that casinos will renew hard-up towns and cities, citing a saturated regional gaming market, as well as predicting that casinos might hurt, not help, such places by sowing crime and spooking property values.

Caesars warns of potential casino bankruptcy

(REUTERS) – Caesars Entertainment Corp on Friday cited “substantial doubt” about the ability of the casino company’s main operating unit to survive past next year without restructuring its debt, possibly through Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the company said its Caesars Entertainment Operating Co unit currently has enough liquidity to survive, but would need additional funding by the fourth quarter of 2015 “absent a refinancing, amendment, private restructuring, or a reorganization under Chapter 11.”

“These factors raise substantial doubt as to CEOC’s ability to continue as a going concern beyond the fourth quarter of 2015,” the filing said.

Earlier this week Bloomberg News reported that Caesars was nearing a deal with Elliott Management Corp and Pacific Investment Management Co, investment funds that own a large amount of the gaming company’s senior debt, to back a plan to put the operating unit into bankruptcy in January.

Caesar’s has been waging a legal battle with its financial creditors over its efforts to restructure operations as it struggles with $25 billion in debt.

Holders of junior debt sued the company in a Delaware court, alleging that the choice assets of Caesars Entertainment Operating Co were being moved beyond the reach of its creditors. Caesars Entertainment has argued the moves have been a way to build a $3 billion cash cushion.

In June, Gary Loveman, Caesars Entertainment’s chief executive, said he was confident the company and its noteholders would reach an agreement without a bankruptcy.

Caesars was created in 2008 by the $30 billion leveraged buyout of Harrah’s Entertainment, a deal led by Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital.

How Blackstone can save The Cosmopolitan

FORTUNE — Blackstone may have just hit the jackpot with its $1.73 billion acquisition of The Cosmopolitan Hotel of Las Vegas. Not only did the private equity firm nab the hip hotel and casino from owner Deutsche Bank at a considerable discount to its development costs, it did so just before the hotel appears set to finally generate some real profits.

But nothing is a sure bet when it comes to the cutthroat Vegas hotel market. In order for Blackstone BX to achieve the sort of strong returns its investors expect, the firm’s real-estate team will need to trim costs and boost profitability at the Cosmo’s floundering casino business. While Blackstone lacks relevant experience in the casino space, some out-of-the box thinking on its part, combined with an experienced management team poached from a rival resort, could be the winning ticket to permanently move the Cosmo from red to black.

At first blush, it seems as if Blackstone may have overpaid for its first piece of the Las Vegas Strip. That might sound odd considering that the purchase price works out to a whopping 60% discount to the $4.3 billion Deutsche Bank DB ended up sinking into the project. Cosmo’s trailing 12-month Ebitda (which is what it earned last year, before taking into account interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization expenses), based on its latest quarterly filing, works out to around $115 million. As such, the $1.73 billion purchase price implies an enterprise value (ev/ebitda) multiple of 14.8. That compares with rival MGM Resorts International MGM, owner of such Las Vegas mega hotels as the Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, and the MGM Grand, which has a trailing ev/ebitda multiple of around 11.8. This suggests that the Cosmo’s valuation at the moment is a bit rich compared to the valuations of its peers.

But those metrics are backwards looking, so they don’t really paint an accurate picture of the hotel’s potential profitability. For example, the company’s Ebitda growth rate has accelerated rapidly quarter over quarter, doubling in the last year alone. As Vegas recovers from its post-recession slump, so too will the Cosmo’s dismal earnings.

But despite its expensive rooms, which average around $300 a night; pricey hotel bars where cocktails average around $15 a pop (before tip, of course); and profitable nightclub venues, where bottle service can set you back thousands of dollars; the Cosmo still doesn’t make money. It isn’t because people aren’t sleeping, drinking, and playing at the resort — it is actually sold out on most weekends and even during the week while big conventions are in town. No, the Cosmo has two big problems — its expenses are out of control and its casino isn’t pulling its weight.

General and administrative expenses at the hotel rose 3% in the first three months of the year compared with the same time last year to a whopping $25 million, or around 14% of revenues. Meanwhile, G&A expenses at rival MGM was at around 12% of revenues. If the Cosmo’s expenses were on par with the MGM this past quarter on a revenue basis, it would have saved around $3 million. That’s around 25% of the $12 million net loss it posted for the quarter.

G&A expenses don’t include sales and marketing expenses, which, for the first quarter of the year, came in at around $20.7 million for the Cosmo. This is Vegas, and while it is understood that hotels need to spend big bucks to make money, there must be a point of diminishing returns. A marketing and sales budget of around 11% of revenue may be overkill. Trimming the budget even 5% would save the Cosmo around $1 million per quarter.

Blackstone can cut all it wants, but the battle for profitability will ultimately be decided by what happens to the top line. If it doesn’t boost revenue, chances are the hotel will continue to struggle. How Blackstone intends on achieving this feat remains to be seen. It could take a page out of its recent successful leveraged buyout of Hilton Hotels and try to expand the Cosmopolitan brand as it did with the Waldorf-Astoria and Conrad luxury brands. Rebranding top Hilton resorts as Cosmopolitans in major cities would create greater brand recognition and could build a loyal following, something the hotel currently lacks.

The casino is the Cosmo’s weakest link. While the casino makes money, it doesn’t make enough to cover the high taxes and fixed costs associated with running a massive resort. Blackstone may try to tackle this conundrum in a few different ways. It could first lower the house odds, drawing in customers and getting them hooked on the Cosmopolitan “lifestyle.” That’s a risky ploy, which could end up backfiring on the hotel if doesn’t monitor tables like a hawk.

But it does present an opportunity to bring in new and younger customers to the tables who may be apprehensive playing against an unbeatable house. While the Cosmo’s young clientele spends a great deal of cash on booze and food, they tend to walk past the tables and slot machines on their way up to the second floor clubs and bars. Monetizing clientele already in the building is always easier than trying to draw in new people off the street. Incentives that link entry to the exclusive lounges with play time could draw in a whole new set of customers for the Cosmo’s hungry casino.

Bringing in younger players is a good start, but it probably won’t be enough to ensure the property’s long term potential. For that, Blackstone needs to target high rollers at other casinos, most of whom tend to be older with deeper pockets. This can be done by poaching management from rivals that have personal relationships with high net worth gamblers.

But the biggest trouble with the Cosmo and its casino is that it may be too unique. A high roller at the Bellagio will be treated like a king at all of MGM’s 15 properties in both Vegas and Macau, the gambling mecca of Asia. The MGM’s MLife loyalty program keeps a large chunk of clients out of the Cosmo’s casinos. Sure, these high rollers might go for a drink at the Marquee nightclub at the Cosmo, but they won’t be hitting the casino floor. Figuring out a strong loyalty program is essential for the Cosmo to win over the “whales,” those gamblers who drop millions in a night of obsessive gambling. Blackstone could gain some customers by connecting the hotel with Hilton’s loyalty program, but it really needs to align with another casino.

Besides the casino, Blackstone can do a number of things right away to pump up profits quickly. For example, The Cosmopolitan isn’t really using its presence on the Strip very well — actually, it isn’t using it at all. It could gain more foot traffic and lure more potential gamblers to its floor if it actually does something with that space, like new retail and restaurant options. And the top four floors of in its two towers remain empty — devoid of anything. That space could be sold off as exclusive condos or turned into a nightclub. It could also be an exclusive high rollers-only gambling paradise.

There is no denying that the Cosmo has enormous upside potential for Blackstone. It still has the cache of being the newest big hotel on the strip — a distinction it has milked for all its worth. Based on the way the economy is improving, there isn’t much that Blackstone has to do for the Cosmo to post modest profits. But the Cosmo is right on the cusp of making big money. It just needs a good push.

Vegas’ next big thing

Gary Loveman, CEO of Caesars Entertainment, the biggest casino operator in the world, does not like conjecture. Give him facts, and lots of them. He calls himself a “recovering academic” (he has a Ph.D. in economics from MIT) and recalls the many tests that led his company to its latest endeavor, a $550 million project called the Linq. It’s an outdoor mall built out of a dusty service road that leads to what will soon be the largest Ferris wheel on earth (the preferred nomenclature is “observation wheel,” since it is not temporary or for carnivals). The wheel is called the High Roller.

Note something striking missing from the picture: gambling. And there are no theaters for Donny and Marie either. Just bars and restaurants and shopping and, oh, yeah, cupcakes and bowling. One of the anchor tenants is Brooklyn Bowl; the other is Sprinkles, the Los Angeles-based cupcake emporium that claims to have kicked off the craze. The Linq — which should partially open on New Year’s Eve this year — is a space purpose-built for a new kind of Vegas visitor. Loveman knows who this visitor is, has his facts, the results of his exhaustive surveys and tests. Hear him list them, dropping a heavy hand on the tabletop as he does so, ring finger tapping against the hardwood: thud-plink.

“Twenty million — thud-plink — that’s how many people walked by this corner, and that was in 2009. You have this mass of humanity and sure — thud-plink — about 30% of Americans will visit a casino and gamble in a given year, but a much higher percentage are shopping, drinking, eating. We’re playing a numbers game — thud-plink. This is a much bigger number.”

Vegas is always reinventing itself to draw new clientele. The big move in the 1990s was to make the Strip family-friendly. The latest craze, spurred by Steve Wynn, is mega-nightclubs and poolside day clubs, with table reservations requiring that guests spend at least $10,000 on drinks. The shifting visitor demographics, however, speak to some still newer breed. Nearly 40 million people visited Vegas last year, more than ever before, but they gambled less and stayed in cheaper hotel rooms. They were also — according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority — more affluent and likely to be single. They traveled in smaller groups. And they were younger: For the first time in Vegas’ history, the median visitor age sank below 49 years old, to 45. Many, at Caesars and elsewhere, expect it to dip below 40 in the next decade, and that Gen Y and Gen X spending will account for 52% of visitor revenue by 2015.

Call it the Hangover effect — everyone here already does. The movie, about a trio of men-children and their adventures in the wake of a wild night out, has crystallized what the town represents for this new breed. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, yes, but it probably should not be planned. “Visitors are more spontaneous,” Loveman says. “People are walking more than ever before.” The trick is to manufacture just the sort of urban environment they will flock to. One with a flame at its heart that will draw the walking throngs like so many moths. In this case the flame is a 3.5-million-pound wheel of steel.

Focus on the High Roller (Loveman: “In the long history of awful gaming puns, this one isn’t so bad”) and you might miss the subtle engineering of the rest of the space. Sure, the wheel’s observation pods are as big as a conference room and have 300 square feet of glass hand-shaped by a single guy outside Venice, Italy. But the street in which the Linq is built was carefully shaped too.

The width, for example, compares to lanes in Dublin or to Bourbon Street in New Orleans because the architects visited those places and measured them. The walkway is slightly sloped, to subconsciously pull visitors forward. It flattens in the small plazas where you’re likely to linger. The overall effect is meant to be that of an old gathering space such as Boston’s Faneuil Hall.

One of the trickiest elements of the project wasn’t a technical challenge but a philosophical one. Once you get visitors into those observation pods, what do you do about a camera inside? Cameras are everywhere in this town except, notably, hotel rooms and poolside cabanas. Do you put a camera in the pods? Would that ruin the magic? The answer is: yes, you do, but the feed is on delay.